Tag Archives: sport

Alone in Europe: Hating Football

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It’s that time again: the biennial international football tournament.

For the next few months every man I meet, or even pass within 600 metres of, will automatically assume that I have football fever burning through my terraced soul like Bovril magma; especially since this is the first time that Scotland has qualified for a major tournament since 1998. Ah, I remember those days. Not in a tremendously detailed way, of course, because it was fucking ages ago and my brain is now a misted, hiccuping wreck. But I remember the times well enough to state with some certainty that in 1998 I certainly wasn’t sporting a subtle pair of breasts like I am now, or housing a set of lungs like a couple of burned bean-bags.

One important thing hasn’t changed since 1998: I’m still utterly indifferent to football. How I dread that conversational opener: ‘You watching the game tonight?’ It’s not really a question though. It’s a statement; one that doesn’t so much militarise itself against contradiction as exist blissfully unaware of the faintest possibility of contradiction. So when I respond ‘No’ something dulls and sinks in the asker’s eyes, like they’ve just found out their favourite Muppet from childhood is a serial killer. They back away from my potentially contagious apathy and ignorance, perhaps imagining that even thirty-seconds in my company could transform them from burly football fanatics into springy-legged ballet enthusiasts. Sometimes they’ll probe for a reassuring sporting corollary, refusing to believe that there isn’t at least a kernel of testosterone swimming somewhere in my feminised bloodstream, however far or faint:

“Ah, so you’re a rugby man, then?”

“Nope.”

“Cricket?”

“Nope.”

“Tennis?”

“Nope.”

Panic clouds their eyes.

“Darts?”

“Nope.”

At this point I can see that I’ve almost destroyed them, along with their fragile sense of the world.

“Tiddlywinks???”

I used to lie. I’d wade in to a conversation armed only with my baseline knowledge of football (which largely consisted of knowing that people kicked a ball about a bit of grass, and tried to put it in a goal), and, over the course of the day – speaking to many people – would accrue details of past games and future fixtures, nurturing a conversational snowball that gained in size and speed with every meeting, that I could roll throughout the day until, finally, I was a walking avalanche of footballing punditry.

I’d casually freestyle about how the star striker fared in a cup final eight years previously, or angrily decry the manager’s lousy tactics. I’d even cite the offside rule apropos of nothing, simply to cement my status as Jimmy Hill incarnate. At that stage of glorious metamorphosis I wouldn’t wait to have my input requested. I’d actively hunt people with whom to talk about football:

“You, boy! Yes, you! You’re gonna listen up here, because Christie shouldn’t have played the 4-4-2 formation, he should’ve favoured a more defensive 5-3-2 formation, especially since the other side were fielding Juarez, and as we all know he’s scored an average of 33 goals a year for his club side over the past three years, well worth his fucking asking price of £14million if you ask me, lovely chap, he got married last year, I believe it was a Tuesday in Shrewsbury, left-handed he is, used to play for… ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME??”

“Sorry, I …eh… I don’t really follow football?”

“YOU DON’T FOLLOW??…. YOU FUCKING FAIRY!…

…How do you feel about tiddlywinks?”

I’m often envious of the passion and camaraderie that swirls around football; that tribal feeling of belonging to a shared universe – with its own unique history, language, struggles and victories – the membership of which has always eluded me. But I just can’t get myself worked up about 22 strangers houfing a sphere of inflated leather up and down a bit of grass for 90 minutes, however much I try. And I certainly don’t understand how it is that the sight of 11 strangers wearing the team colours of Scotland is supposed to fill me with patriotic fervour, or how the performance of said players should in any way affect my self-esteem.

English football-loving friends and acquaintances love to ramp up the banter on occasions such as these, hoping I’ll bite, but I never do, simply because I couldn’t give a flying bag of fucks about the outcome. Whether Scotland wins 10-nil, are defeated 10-nil, or they all ride out onto the field on ostrich-back dressed as pirates while ritually sacrificing mice to a Babylonian god, my psyche remains unmoved and intact.

In saying that, I’m not entirely immune to being stirred by the fortunes of my ball-kicking countrymen, even if all I feel is a pre-programmed twitch of investment; an echo of give-a-fuck-iness. I’ll admit to a mild twinge of relief and comfort when Scotland drew with England, but I think that was probably down to a sense of happiness that millions of English people would be disappointed.

I didn’t watch Scotland’s final game in the Euros, but I did keep checking the score on my phone, at first finding myself relieved, then despondent. For a moment I worried I might be developing some rudimentary form of misguided patriotism, but, luckily, roughly 3.5 seconds after clocking the end result – a drubbing, predictably – I realised I still didn’t really give a fuck, and what fuck I did give was so tiny it wasn’t worth worrying about: a baby Fuck; Fuck Jnr.; Tyrion Fuckister; a miniscule, microscopic mote of a fuck that was already dead; the ghost of a fuck.

Renton from Trainspotting once said: “It’s shite being Scottish.”

To which I would respond: “Only if you let it be.”

Anyway, I can’t sit here professing dislike for football all day. I’m off to see how big Tam McGlintoch gets on in the International Tiddlywinks Olympics.

READ ABOUT HOW FOOTBALL RUINED MY HOLIDAY HERE

Next time: Football and salmonella.

On being a Dad who sucks at sports

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My son can throw a ball. Big whoop, right? Well, it’s a big whoop for me, you poo-pooing, party-pooping, poopy-pants, because it’s a god damned miracle that I’ve managed to sire a child who can run more than 100 yards without falling over and smashing his teeth out, much less demonstrate a modicum of sporting prowess.

I was – and very much still am – a handless, footless bastard: as graceful as a new-born calf trying to roller-skate on unset jelly; as co-ordinated as a one-armed man with a dagger jammed in each eye. My playground contemporaries oft remarked that I ‘threw like a girl’. If only I’d been born a couple of decades later, I could’ve had the little bastards prosecuted for gender-based hate-crimes. As it stands, I had to follow the old sticks-and-stones adage, and throw sticks and stones at them, which of course missed them, because I threw like a girl.

Most Scottish dads are expected to inculcate their sons into the ancient, dark arts of football, readying them for an adult life of meat-pies of dubious origin, strong lager, weak bladders and soul-shredding disappointment. Well, I don’t have any football-related skills or passion for the so-called beautiful game to pass on to my two boys. The reason? There are many factors, but I suppose the key ones are that a) I’m shite at football, and b) I think football is shite.

These things usually reach you by osmosis. My father was a football fanatic, but he was largely absent from my childhood, so he couldn’t pass on or light the torch. My uncle was a football fanatic, too, but he lived quite far away, and worked abroad most of the time. My grandfathers were both footballing men, but their footballing days were far behind them by the time I came along, and they certainly didn’t go to any matches. What avenues did that leave? Outwith the ball-kicking bosom of their families, Scottish kids tend to learn the bulk of their fleet-footed craft in the streets and parks of their neighbourhoods, playing kerbie, keepie-uppy, and world cuppy with their friends – jumpers for goal-posts and all that jazz – but I grew up in a semi-rural area, far outside the comfortable door-knocking range of my peers.

I was always picked last when football teams were being assembled in the playground. I was usually put in goal, the rationale being: ‘He’s tall. That’ll make it easier for him to stop things going past him.’ Well, the joke was on them, because everything got past me. Well, everything except their cruel – though admittedly accurate – jibes about how shite I was at football.

But was I bad at football because I never played it, or did I never play football because I was so bad at it? Nobody cared, least of all me. After a while I stopped lining up for draft, and went off to play ‘Japs and Commandos’ instead. Js & Cs is one of the many playground games we Scottish school-boys loved to play in the days before we realised just how massively racist we all were. PC notwithstanding, I was pretty good at the old Js & Cs: miming machine-guns, diving about, doing commando rolls. Perhaps I shouldn’t be too proud of that, though, given that the only real skill involved in the ‘game’ is the ability to mimic the noise of an old, fat Englishman with a stammer having an asthma attack as he falls down a hill.

The power of the ‘He’s tall’ principle extended beyond football into other ball-based sports. It was also responsible for encouraging the belief that I might be good at basketball. Unfortunately, height alone is no indicator of prowess, otherwise an electricity pylon and the Eiffel Tower would be among the best basketball players of our time. That being said, I’m painfully aware that both of those inanimate structures are almost definitely better at basketball than me.

The ineptitude doesn’t stop there. In my early twenties I went with a group of friends to the local pitch and putt. The pros went first, whacking their balls with poise and precision (settle down!), sending them arcing and speeding into the grey sky like reverse hailstones. I decided to go last. You know what they say about saving the best, right? (coughs)

I was a little apprehensive, but only a very little, because – seriously – how wrong could it go? Swinging a bit of metal behind your head and thwacking a ball? Easy. My confidence reigned supreme, even when I adopted a teeing off stance that was so low to the ground it looked like I was about to take a shit. I concentrated hard, and started to swing. Just as the club reached its apex above my shoulder, a chorus of laughs erupted behind me. I froze mid-swing, like a statue of a really bad golfer. ‘Fuck it,’ I said, dropping the club to the ground. ‘I’ll just watch.’

Christ I’m awful. I even suck at darts. Not much of a tiddlywink player, either.

Sport was never my thing, but that’s okay, because growing up I had plenty of other things in my life to occupy my time. I would explore the countryside: roaming through forests, chasing badgers with sticks, jumping over burns and streams pretending I was some famous Peruvian explorer. I would stroll into the middle of farmers’ fields and sit down in the grass, waiting to be encircled by a herd of cows, who’d come up and sniff and lick my shoes as I sang to them, usually a song by the Righteous Brothers (good job I never chose Phil Collins else they might have stampeded me to death). I grew into an almost evangelical atheist, but as a young nipper I’d stick a sign on my door that said ‘Do not disturb – playing for God’, and I’d spend long hours entertaining the big man with snippets of off-the-cuff theatre. I wasn’t religious. Just lonely. I’d write comics and stories; I’d record little sketches on my cassette player. I guess what I’m trying to say is: I was an absolute fucking weirdo.

I don’t want my sons to be weirdos like me. Well, not entirely. Perhaps just weird enough to be compelling; just weird enough to be able to peer through a dark mirror of imagination into a world of beautiful and terrible possibilities. Weird, but not cows-licking-your-shoes weird. I want them to be ‘regular’ to the degree that they participate in physical pursuits that will help them stay happy and healthy throughout their lives.They’re Scottish. They need all the help they can get.

I’d rather they side-swiped football, though. Sectarianism and tribalism are potent forces in Central and western Scotland; states of mind and ways of life that football often serves to magnify. That’s why I bought my eldest son, Jack, a baseball when he turned two. And it’s why both brothers will be encouraged to take up sports like badminton, skiing, swimming and Taekwondo. In the time honoured tradition of contrary children, this probably means they’ll become world-class footballers.

Jack’s four now, and after a few years of playing catch with his baseball he’s got pretty sharp hand-eye co-ordination. He hasn’t quite mastered the catching part yet, but when it comes to pitching he’s consistent, powerful and accurate. Pitch perfect, if you like. From near, from far, he sends that ball spinning straight to your hands like a spherical homing missile, time, after time, after time.

I guess you could say he throws like a girl. Because that’s a compliment now.

I hope they continue to be more girl-like as they get older, mainly because their mother likes to run and work-out, and I like to sit down and write about how awful I am at not getting any exercise.

I’m probably going to die a fat, awkward bastard, but I’m glad my kids have got a sporting chance.

Still… it could be worse…

Skinflats and the Magic Torch

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The bonnie village of Skinflats.

Skinflats is actually quite a nice wee village, and I’m not just saying that incase some of its residents read this article. Well, OK, there’s a little of that. Have you seen some of the people who live there? Big leg-o’-lamb arms, match-strike chins and shotgun licences. (hack punchline alert) And that’s just the women! Do you know what Salmand Rushdie’s agent said to him when he was writing ‘The Satanic Verses’?

‘Say what you like about Mohammed, mate, but for fuck’s sake don’t slag off Skinflats.’

‘You aint from around here, are ya, boy?’

The village is surrounded by acres of fields (or, to give them their local name: the burial grounds). Those fields are to the people of Skinflats what the empty desert is to the mobsters of Las Vegas. Many a fingerless hand and a brutally disembodied boaby sleeps with the bushes up them thar fields. So, if it’s all the same with you, I’ll just say nice things. I want to be Robert de Niro in this movie; let some other daft cunt be Joe Pesci.

What I will say is this: I had the pleasure of working in Skinflat’s local shop many, many years ago, and found the village to be a lot like Brookside Close. But with slightly more laughs. And a lot more hidden corpses.

Skinflats, though, eh? What a name. It sounds like the sort of place lost hillwalkers stumble across in the dead of night, tragically unaware that its inhabitants are all horrifically disfigured mutant cannibal serial killers who live in tents made from human flesh. The sort of place whose name you’d never expect to utter without the accompaniment of terrifying, Castle-Dracula-style thunder claps. The sort of place that would make an estate agent say: ‘Well, congratulations on your land purchase. I hope Skinflats proves to be a lucrative location for your new motel, Mr Bates.’

David Beckham was so distressed when Seb Cole told him he had to go to Skinflats, that he started to morph into Bruce Forsyth.

So what was I doing there? Taking a walk down memory lane? Admiring the scenery? Scoring drugs? No, it was Olympic Torch day. The flame had been to Stirling and Falkirk that morning, and was about to be carried through Skinflats on its way to Fife and Edinburgh. The people of Skinflats were overjoyed to be having their ten minutes of fame.

‘This’ll put Skinflats on the map,’ I heard someone say. No. No it won’t. An air strike would put Skinflats on the map. Tomorrow, they won’t even be talking about this in Bo’ness, much less London. Even in fifty years time when some plucky lad who got the day off school to see the flame pass through the village tries to remember the splendour of the day, he won’t be able to differentiate this real memory from the sixteen-thousand acid flashbacks also housed in his brain. ‘I’m sure it was a zombie Colonel Gaddafi running down the street with that flame. Just as the air strike hit.’

Anyway, maybe he can just re-read this blog and it’ll all come flooding back to him. The day was nice and bright and sunny, and the whole village was bustling with people waving flags, cracking jokes, and smiling and laughing, and generally having an awesome time. I dunno; maybe they were just drunk.

Normally if you saw a guy carrying a flaming torch through Skinflats, you’d expect the rest of the villagers to be right behind him with pitchforks shouting, ‘Burn the monster!’ Or, at the very least: ‘The Sun says there’s a paedo living somewhere within a fifty-mile radius. Let’s burn the fucker who moved into number 27 last week, just incase! Anyway, he said ‘hello’ to my daughter this morning, and that’s how it starts!’

But this day was different. Even the convoy of police bikes was greeted with warm, uproarious cheers. This struck me as odd. Like George Bush being carried through Baghdad by way of a jovial mass crowd-surf. Usually the arrival of police vehicles in Skinflats causes a mass exodus, or at the very least turns the village into a fortress: with every snib on every door clicking shut, and those behind the doors jamming them up with tables and wardrobes, and blacking out the windows, like they’re preparing to survive to the end of a zombie film.

The bike cops clearly thought they were the star attraction, as they gunned it down the street giving a series of wacky waves and salutes. One cop even gave a rolling five slap down a line of children’s hands. You might be cheering now, kids, but that’s the cunt who’ll be arresting you for cocaine possession in eight to ten years – which, coincidentally, will also be your sentence.

The best thing about the torch coming through Skinflats was the traffic chaos that preceded its arrival. A long jam of angry, self-conscious people all trapped in their cars, whilst a whole village peered at them. They must have felt like they’d gone for a day out at the safari park, and broken down in the lion enclosure. I tried to stare at as many of them as possible.

The Cunta-Cola truck.

It wasn’t long before a procession of yellow Olympic vehicles came trundling through the village. Lots of cars that looked like New York taxis. And the Coca Cola truck, of course, with a gang of reps walking beside it handing out free bottles of cola. Principles be damned: it was a hot day and I was thirsty. That freebie was gubbed. I know McDonalds sponsor the Olympics, too, and was a little annoyed that they hadn’t sent a truck laden with free beefburgers. Bank of Scotland had a truck in the procession, too, with some English cunt on its open top-deck dancing like a dick to shitty pop music. No free money getting handed out, I noticed.

Nice choice of sponsors for an international sporting event: Coca Cola, McDonalds, and Bank of Scotland. ‘Hey, kids. You’re all going to be fat bastards with diabetes and no pensions. LET’S FUCKING CELEBRATE!’

Eventually the guy with the flaming torch got off of his little yellow bus, jogged for about 100 metres, everybody cheered, and then he got back on his bus again, the lazy bastard. And I’m glad I was there to see it. One day I’ll be telling my grandkids about this. Telling them how shit it was. The free Cola was good, though.

This is the best picture I could manage!

* sincere apologies to the people of Skinflats. I love you all, you know I was only having a laugh (ie, please don’t kill me – I’m trying to put you on the map!).

** Note to foreign readers of the site, especially Americans. Skinflats genuinely is a lovely village, and also the birthplace of William Wallace, so do come visit if you’re flying in to Edinburgh. Thanks, Jamie.